After listening to Dystopia, I have come to the conclusion that it's a decent enough album, but it lacks the true magic of IE's best works. There isn't a real classic on the album, although the title track, Anthem and Anguish of Youth come close. It's pretty much more of the same that we've seen from IE since Something Wicked, without a true epic to define the album (Damien, Gettysburg). I'm sure much of it will translate well live, but it's certainly nothing that's going to make a new fan stand up and take notice.
About the only real hope for the future is the new vocalist, who as was noted pretty much combines Barlow and Ripper's style. I'd say he has Barlow's low range and emotion, with Ripper's power, bit and high range. That's a pretty good combination, if only Jon could write some true classics to fit the voice.
But it's sad to say, I'd say Jons best days are well well behind him. In fact, his best writing in the last decade or so hasn't even been for IE, but for the Demons and Wizards project. Perhaps the switch of vocalists has really thrown him, and the promise of the Something Wicked albums never really came to fruition--they're more or less good, but not the blowaway classics that we had hoped they would be.
But still, I'm looking forward to seeing the band live to see how the new material comes across, and how the new vocalist does. Let's hope that Jon is a much better judge of setlists than he has been in the past, b/c the GB tour really didn't allow Ripper to stretch himself with the classic IE material, and the Crucible tour was just a complete fucking disaster, at least on the show that I was at where Matt just plain sucked, especially with the Ripper material (although I was told that Barlow was ill for much of the tour). Let's hope we get a better mix of the very old IE, the Barlow IE and the Ripper IE, plus the new material. I think Stu Block might do an awesome job of all of it, and I can't wait to find out.
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Topic: The Official Iced Earth Thread v. "Tastes Like Treason!" (Read 314424 times)